Which is what Representative Dennis E. Williams does in his piece in the NJ this AM called House Bill 146 would create more jobs than Bloom Energy. His claim:
There are 34,900 people unemployed in Delaware, according to last month’s report from the Department of Labor. This doesn’t count potentially hundreds more who may be laid off as a result of the bankruptcy of Allen Family Foods in Sussex County.
But these aren’t just numbers. These are our family, friends and neighbors, many of whom have been forced out of their homes.
Legislation I have introduced would create 3,600 jobs.
Under House Bill 146, these would at first mostly be union and non-union construction jobs, building facilities for new businesses. Another 2,000 full-time jobs would be created with the start of operations of these new businesses.
But yet, this is being stopped by:
Six is the number of state representatives on a House committee voting to prevent H.B. 146 from going to the House floor for debate and passage: John Viola, Helene Keeley, Dan Short, Biff Lee, Gerald Hocker and Darryl Scott.
The smallest number, three, is the number of businesses in Delaware who are benefiting from the lack of competition that H.B. 146 would end.
Projections of job creation are notoriously soft — and certainly the construction jobs here are temporary, only lasting for as long as the construction does. And I don’t know much about the quality of the majority of the jobs available at a newly built casino — as in whether these jobs are FT, have benefits and have some upward mobility.
But while I applaud Williams for naming names here, it is precisely the lack of internal competition (or, really, the existence of fairly vibrant competition from venues outside of the state) that is the long term problem here. I keep asking the question over and over (and have asked one of the Obstructing Six too) — How do you maintain a market for the Harrington and Dover venues (in particular), when there are venues in MD and PA that are specifically targeting some of the same market AND are more convenient to get to? No one has been able to answer that question, but by the time these two venues know that competition is a problem, it will be way too hard for Delaware to recapture that market. And these guys and girls will be looking to spend your money to try to recapture the thing that they should have planned on retaining, instead of just doing what the current casino owners asked them to do.
It is just short-sighted not to get out of the way of the market here and let ALL of these venues — the current ones and the proposed ones — live or die on their own. And without special protections from the Obstructionist Six — John Viola, Helene Keeley, Dan Short, Biff Lee, Gerald Hocker and Darryl Scott.